


Truth Serums Not Required

by e_cat



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Hogwarts AU, I feel like a disproportionate amount of this is worldbuilding, I probably should have written more, I should stop doing things at the last minute..., I'm not sure this AU works well in such a short fic..., I'm so sorry, It's kind of a mess, M/M, except for the fact that Hogwarts isn't important to the plot at all, this is literally just kind of taking a bit of the canon storyline and changing the setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:45:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9043925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_cat/pseuds/e_cat
Summary: Most of the students at Hogwarts are wondering why Neil hasn't been killed for stealing Andrew's cat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhwgv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhwgv/gifts).



> This was written through the [AFTG Exchange](http://aftgexchange.tumblr.com) as a gift for [softjace](http://softjace.tumblr.com). The suggested prompt was Hogwarts AU, but... this hardly has anything to do with Hogwarts...

There were a lot of things about Andrew Minyard that you just didn’t mess with – mostly, if you valued keeping your nose in the same place you’d been born having it, you just didn’t go near him at all. Even with his wand confiscated, no one wanted to be the one to find out just how much damage he could still do. And though it was inadvisable to bother Andrew in general, really, there were two things that you absolutely, under no circumstances ever messed with: his personal space, and his cat.

This was pretty common knowledge, of course. Really, it might as well be written in the Hogwarts orientation packet. On the front page. There was absolutely no reason that a single person at the school shouldn’t know that rule. Enter: Neil Josten.

Neil wasn’t stupid, not by any means. He was quite aware of the reputation Andrew had, and he certainly wasn’t going to forget that night Andrew and his group had poured potions into his drinks. For most people, that experience was enough to cultivate a healthy distance between Andrew and his victim – not necessarily fear, but at least an understanding of how seriously Andrew took threats against those he protected. Neil, always the exception, took that understanding and turned it into a never-ending stream of questions, spending time at Andrew’s side as if he wanted to know more. It was tolerable, if annoying, but again, Andrew had his limits.

Truly, most of Hogwarts had been expecting the fallout for the better part of two weeks. At Christmas break, Neil had gone home with Riko, which no one had known at the time, but he’d come back with that same magic mark on his face that Riko, Kevin and Jean each had, plus a whole new hair color. Andrew had been in the infirmary through break and a little after, but there hadn’t yet been a comment from him or anyone else on Neil’s change in appearance. That wasn’t the real issue, though; what really made people fear for Neil’s safety was the way that Andrew’s cat suddenly seemed to be following him around. You didn’t mess with Andrew Minyard’s cat.

Here was something that most of Hogwarts didn’t know, though: Neil had seen Andrew since break. It didn’t look like it because Andrew was currently pretending that no one in the world existed, but there were nights. Andrew was the sort of person who wandered the halls at night like he didn’t care if he got caught, because he didn’t, and by some consequent magic, of the metaphorical sort, he never seemed to be spotted; Neil was the sort of person who knew how to sneak around like his life depended on it. So, there were nights.

Some nights, they found each other by accident – Andrew was smoking under a staircase, or Neil was sneaking into the library. Sometimes, there was a brief acknowledgement before continuing on their separate ways, and sometimes, there was Neil sitting on the floor next to Andrew, Andrew methodically replacing books on the wrong shelves. The meetings they’d had recently, to Neil, seemed to be more than chance. There hadn’t been any verbal planning, but this was four nights now that Neil had joined Andrew on the same balcony, and it seemed like more than coincidence.

This was the fourth night, though, and it was the first time Andrew bothered to say anything. He passed Neil a cigarette, like every night before, and then without ceremony, he said, “Where’d you get the cat?”

Neil grinned down at the cigarette perched between his fingers. “How do you know it’s not yours?” he asked. “Everyone else seems to think it is.”

Andrew gave him a look. “My cat isn’t stupid enough to follow you around. Only something that belongs to you could have survival instincts that bad.”

Neil scoffed, casually levitating his cigarette as a way to occupy his focus. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, he tilted his head just slightly towards Andrew. “A truth for a truth?” he suggested.

Andrew rolled his eyes in an overexaggerated sort of way, like he was rolling his eyes at the fact that he was rolling his eyes, like it was the sort of thing other people did and he was only mimicking it just this once. “I think you owe me one.”

“Hmm,” Neil acknowledged. “But do you really want to use it on this?”

Andrew looked indifferent. He tapped a bit of his cigarette over the edge of the balcony and finally ground out, “What do you want?”

Neil put a miniscule effort into not grinning as he pretended to think it over. He pressed to just before the point he knew Andrew would stop tolerating it, and then he asked, “What’s your cat’s name?”

“Cat,” Andrew responded simply.

Neil really shouldn’t have been surprised, but he couldn’t help but laugh. All this time, and all of the school had been wondering what sort of awful thing Andrew could have named his cat. Really, this minimal-effort solution should have been obvious. “He needs a better name than that,” he mused. “Sir Fat Cat McCatterson, perhaps?”

“Thin ice, Neil,” Andrew replied, not sounding at all like he cared. “Your turn.”

“Oh,” Neil said, more than ready to make things difficult. “My cat’s name is King Fluffikins. He’d probably get along pretty well with Sir Fat Cat, don’t you think?” He allowed Andrew a moment to show how unimpressed he was with this response, and then he added, “I’ve always had the cat. It was part of the deal with Riko to let people see him, though; I’m supposed to stop hiding, remember?”

“Yes, I’m sure the cat is how people will identify you,” Andrew mocked.

Neil shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t call the markings distinctive, all things considered.” Considering, in other words, just how similar Neil’s cat was to Andrew’s. Right down to the soft gray patch over the right eye. If their peers knew that it wasn’t Andrew’s cat following Neil around, their next theory would probably have been that Neil had cloned it. “Still, it is one more thing to recognize.” He shrugged. “It is what it is.”

Andrew ground out his cigarette against the side of the balcony before letting it drop to the grounds below. “I swear, if that _cat_ does get you killed, I am never going to forgive you.”

Neil smirked. “Aw, it almost sounds like you care.”

“I don’t,” Andrew informed him, getting to his feet. He jabbed a finger down at Neil. “And I’m not taking care of your cat if you die.”

Neil shrugged, unconcerned. He put out his own cigarette and held out his hand for Andrew to help him up, which he did after an appropriate amount of time invested in a glare. Neil held onto his grin throughout the whole process, and when he was standing, he looked right at Andrew and said, “I guess I’ll try not to die, then.”


End file.
